parted. Their fragrance has ceased. They are exhaustible, temporary, perishing names. But no matter how wide and deep the culture of a christian man may become, no matter how varied his experience, gathered from many lands and many joys, may become, no matter how extensive his religious knowledge may become, if he remain in communion with Christ, if he continue studying this inexhaustible name, its freshness grows upon him, its power unfolds before him and within him. We have often been surprised, yet not surprised, how the name of Jesus, preached with scriptural variety, and a very moderate measure of literary variety, to the same congregation Sabbath after Sabbath, year after year, can retain its power to interest and enliven. Try the great names of history in the same way, and you will find that they become stale as unseasonable hardened bread. Man gets to the end of man, but he never gets to the end of God. That explains the enduring freshness of the name of Jesus. He is living bread, daily living bread for the soul. Sometimes you will see an affecting instance of the enduring freshness of the name of Jesus in the case of the returning backslider. The name of names has been forgotten. Some thick impenetrable veil has been hung between the eye of the inner man and the highest of names. The names of great warriors, great statesmen, great poets, great philosophers, great worldlings, it may be, have beclouded the name of Jesus; or the soul has been lost in its own selfishness, blinded by the dust and glare of human vanity. The charm and royalty of the name of Christ are unfelt, and a heavy penalty is paid, years of heavy penalty are endured. All the unseen worlds are blotted from the view of the soul, and it lives on husks. The death of a relative, or the near prospect of death, opens the blinded eye, softens the seared heart, and the ancient unchangeable name is fresh once more. Lo its beauty still blooms, its fragrance still circulates, its power still plays, its glory still shines, and all above and upon this faithless soul. The old vein is opened, the old name is adored, and in tears of penitence and gratitude and love, the soul whispers-Blessed name, blessed Lord Jesus Christ; I will wander no more.

And it is one of the brightest hopes of the christian soul, that this name will literally have eternal freshness and power. Eternal life will be drawn from the name of Jesus, and sustained by the moral energies of the name of Jesus. Eternal life is life in the Eternal Father, life from the Eternal Father, life to the Eternal Father, filial life in harmony with the life of the Eternal Father. The Son will ever be between us and the Father as our Life, our Eternal Life.

W. B.-K.

GLORYING IN THE CROSS.

Ir is now more than eighteen hundred years since the apostle Paul exclaimed, "God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." It is a sublime utterance, and even at this distance of time unites us to the apostle with our whole soul. It is one of Paul's peerless sayings, and, in form at least, is peculiar to himself. When he uttered it, he had before his mind certain of his fellowmen who gloried in an infinitely lower sphere of things. The idea that one should glory in anything that lies on a plane beneath "Christ and him crucified," arouses his deep and intensely evangelical soul. He cannot endure it. "For myself," he says, "Let it not be! "Away with the thought! God forbid that I should glory save "in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ!" How deeply the cross had touched him! How grandly it had wrapt him into passion!

It is not our aim at present to search into the reasons why Paul gloried in the cross. Doubtless he had reasons, and exalted ones too. He saw it, we presume, somewhat through God's eyes. It stood out clearly before him as the medium by which God is brought down to men, and through which men are lifted up to God-as that which bridges the gulf between the finite and the Infinite-between the holy Father in the heavens and our impure selves, by which we pass over and stand face to facewith God in a sublimer sense than did Moses, and walk with him in more intimate fellowship than did Enoch. He beheld it as the vehicle of heaven's light and heaven's love to the world; as the meritorious condition of those tender mercies which are over all God's works; as the pivot on which turns the vast mechanism of the divine moral providence; as the mightiest and the sweetest power by which the Father of all spirits revolutionizes, and renovates, and binds to Himself the erring and rebellious spirits of men. He apprehended it-shall we say it?as the morally onnipotent lever by which God shall everlastingly hold in equipoise the universe of intelligences. Grasping it thus so grandly in its many-sidedness, no wonder that he exclaims, "God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." We say Amen. We count it our highest praise to re-echo his words with all the love and sincerity of which we are capable. God forbid that we should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto us, and we unto the world.

But at this point, we are specially interrogated. "Why," it is asked, "pass by the incomparable life of Jesus, and those peer

'less sayings, which embody so richly and profoundly the wisdom "of heaven, and fasten on the Cross as the subject-matter of "your glorying? Is not the Cross the shame of humanity? Is "it not the most disgraceful fact in the history of our race? Was "it not suggested in the depraved and cruel heart of man? Was "not the suggestion carried out by wicked hands? Does the "world know of a more revolting, barbarous, bloody iniquity "than that perpetrated on the holy, loving-hearted Son of God? "Why, then, glory in the cross? Why not shrink from it with "horror? Why not glory in that which is divine, and true, and "beautiful, and good, rather than in that which is diabolic, and "the reproach of mankind?" There is here a subtle interblending of the true and the false. The cross of Christ, we admit, when viewed from one of our lower stand-points, is the shame of humanity. It is, when thus viewed, the perfection of the world's guilt. It was ungrateful, cruel, and criminal in the extreme, to crucify the beloved of the Father. But all this lies on the under, the accidental, the non-essential, side of things. The subject has another side, which is upper and divine. Christ came into the world to die. In order to die, he must live. But the life was subservient to the death. "The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and give his life a ransom for many." "He took part in flesh and blood, that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death." We repeat it-Christ came into the world to die for the world. He came into the world to die for the world-as the world's sacrifice. "He died for our sins according to the Scriptures." He came into the world not merely to die, but to die a violent death. Indeed, apart from the many New Testament scriptures that necessarily imply this, we see not how it is possible to apprehend the significance of all those sacrifices "on Jewish altars slain," as types of Jesus, without coming to the conclusion that the righteous moral Governor of the universe intends for the "Lamb of God" a violent death-a sacrificial death-in behalf of sinners. Jesus willingly humbles himself to consummate this divine propitiatory purpose. He humbles himself in love. "Lo! I come," says he, "to do thy will, O God." "I delight to do thy will, O my God; yea, thy law is within my heart." He consequently comes to lay himself on the altar, and be consumed as a sacrifice for the sin of the world. This, then, being the grand determined end of Christ's appearing in the flesh, it must, as the purpose of God, be consummated. Consummated it shall be, whatever be the intentions of men. Consummated it must have been; although the Jews, instead of lifting Jesus up on the cross, had placed him on the throne of his father David. How? That is not our business. God has thousands of agencies at his command by

which it could have been effected. They were not needed. Man, in his blind infatuation, steps in on the line of God's purpose. He works, so to speak, to the divine hand. He rushes with Christ to the cross. He lifts him up between heaven and earth, as if He were the vilest of sinners, utterly undeserving of life. It was a choice worthy of hell. It was a free act of will. It was a pure creation of man, and had its first cause nowhere but in his wicked choice. It was not ordained by God. Away with the thought. It was hateful to him; detested with all the energy of his infinite heart. Indeed, the detestation of that one act outweighs, we doubt not, the detestation. of all other sins. But it was ordained by God that Jesus, as the world's sacrifice, should die a violent death. And as his all-comprehending wisdom perceived that the cross would grandly answer that purpose,would answer all the ends he had in view, he permitted men to nail to the tree his beloved Son. He allowed them to carry out their base purpose; because by means of it, his own glorious purpose could be sufficiently consummated.

Hence the cross, seen from one of our higher standpoints, is "the glory that excelleth." If one does not occupy this point of view, we see not how it could be possible to understand and sympathise with this sublimest utterance of Paul,-sublimest so far as his own thoughts and feelings are concerned. But when once we are able to distinguish between essence and form, and to place ourselves on the stand-point of the divinely inspired apostle, we, as well as he, are able joyously and heartily to exclaim, "God forbid that we should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." We can think of the cross as the noblest work of God, because it is the culmination of the sacrifice of Immanuel for the sin of the world. And just because it is the culmination of the propitiatory sacrifice, its last and finishing and victorious stroke, it is perfectly natural that, by a beautiful figure of speech, in which the part is put for the whole, the cross should become the sign and symbol of the entire obedience until death of our Saviour. It was thus that Paul saw it. It is thus, too, that we behold it. And hence we say, and mean what we say without qualification, "God forbid that we should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ."

Having thus, in a general way, indicated the significance of the cross, as we apprehend it, we would speak more particularizingly. Our difficulty is to select. For the subject almost fills the universe. It is vaster and more glorious, we feel sure, to heavenly eyes than to earthly. And yet we never can see beyond it. It is always round and round about us; always before us, above us,-behind us. There is no interest, human or divine, that we can separate from it. It is true, indeed,

that man,-poor, foolish, blind, brother man, in his folly and ingratitude, separates himself and all that should be dear to him from it. But in reality, his life, his dearest interests, are bound up in the cross of Him that died for him. And "the day will declare it." But let us proceed to decipher the meaning of the

cross.

Philosophers tell us that we are grandly made in the image of God; that we can not only think and love and choose, but that we can think somewhat as God thinks, that we can love somewhat as God loves, and that we can choose somewhat as God chooses; that we are thus sublimely fitted for fellowship with the Father of spirits, and consequently are dear to the Infinite heart. Or, putting it in another way, they say that the value of anything is just in the ratio of the degree in which it expresses God,-expresses him in his most glorious perfections of being and attributes, -expresses him in his uncreated, omnific, omnipotent, all-wise, all-loving, all-good, all-holy splendours and glory. This, they maintain, is the standard of value, the measure of true worth. It is this expression of the infinite Creator and Father, that gives value to creation. But man, so far as creation comes within the sphere of our knowledge, is at the summit. He alone is a stepping-stone on which we rise up to the Deity in his Fatherhood, and in the other sublime elements of his moral Being and Life. Man is thus dear, unspeakably dear, to God. We believe these philosophers. We thank them for their exalted idea. And yet it touches the mass of men but lightly. Indeed, it touches but lightly even the philosophers themselves. Many are not capable of entering into the argument. And many more who can, are not thereby persuaded, and joined to God in love and adoration. What we need and crave for is a distinct, direct, unmistakeable utterance from God himself, an utterance that will be sweetly assuring and persuasive, in which we shall be able to rest with unbounded confidence; by which we shall be united to our Father in peace and love. The great heart of humanity wishes to be assured not only that we are originally made in the image of God, and thus dear to him, but also, and especially, that, notwithstanding all our sins, there is yet in his heart a kindly feeling towards us, and the possibility of pardon, and purity, and bliss. That this is the great need of mankind, the true minister of Jesus Christ knows. That at the bottom of the lowest desire, equally as at the summit of the highest, the outgoing and yearning of the human soul rise towards God as he is to be found only in Christ, all may not know, but all may soon discover, if they have an eye to penetrate to "the hidden man of the heart." All, in some way or another, though unconsciously, crave for God. And in hundreds of cases among the awakened